


Hoard

by filiabelialis



Category: Planeshift Fictional TV Series Campaign
Genre: Domestic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Planeshift Fanworks Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filiabelialis/pseuds/filiabelialis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, here were some things he could put in order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feedingonwind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feedingonwind/gifts), [Flite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flite/gifts).



The dog was refusing to go out again. Elliot was tempted to growl at it. But no—better to reserve that for when it was really needed, lest it lose its effectiveness.

Elliot left the door open, and settled across the room to re-sort a cabinet. He could afford to wait for the dog to realize that this new outside was no more or less alarming than all the other outsides the Tower had been plopped down in, and summon the courage to do its business. He opened the cabinet.

Yes, here were some things he could put in order. The usual collection of dust and coinage—it was amazing, how coins could work their way absolutely everywhere, even the places humans would never think to put them down!—and once those were scraped out, cleaned off, the real work. Some non-magical glass beads, not very tasteful, but pretty. Maybe Elliot would keep them, scatter them in his little hoard to bring even more points of shine to it. A couple slightly magical baubles; nothing special, but perhaps stocking-gifts for next Yule. The Prismatic would almost certainly attack before then, but Elliot could be an optimist if he wanted to. Elliot made a little pile of the potential gifts, separate from the pile of collected beads.

A mug, dusty, but useful. He cleaned it, and hung it by the Tower’s tiny hearth with the others. He was proud of that little arrangement—the group always looked so tired when they got back from wherever they were, and sought comfort in sleep and warm water, and Elliot got the idea to simply put all the mugs out in the open, on hooks, ready to hand for a tired traveler. They appreciated how rustic it looked, or some of them did; wizards were wizards and didn’t care much for their home looking like a hearth-witch’s, and for all that they were like night and day Lowen held that in common with—with Callion.

Elliot turned back to the cabinet. There were so many useless things in there. He should really just dump the majority of them, he thought. Half of these scraps of paper were either research notes or shopping lists, and it was not as though you could tell—Callion’s handwriting had been atrocious. Buoyed by the brash courage of that unhesitant assessment, he considered further—yes, and these strange vials and half-built devices were really a safety hazard, more than anything else, who knew what they were even for, anymore. He extracted the parts of a wand-in-progress, holding it up to the light.

But what if they were useful? Perhaps he should assess them first. He knew he would regret it if the young ladies came back to the Tower injured, or poisoned, or cursed, or full of desperate ideas about how to save a city, or build a safe place, or trick the Genth, or bring impossible ideas to life, and there was a thing that could have helped them that he had just thrown out for not having the creativity to think how he could have used it to save them instead—he couldn’t forgive--

The papers then, he thought, dragging them out by the clawful. Was he to assess all of those as well, pore over the painfully familiar hand until he could hear his old master’s voice as clear as day again? It was a voice that both far too quick to come back into his mind and frighteningly easy to forget, in its little nuances of cadence. The papers brought those back, a script for the Callion in his memory, each a little reliquary for the voice. He couldn’t get rid of the papers.

He took each discreet pile and placed them, one by one, back in the cabinet, neat. He sat for a moment looking at his dusty claws, at a loss. Perhaps he could ask the younger sister, the artificer, to help him file the papers, next time she was deposited here for safekeeping. A good way to keep a watchful eye over her, too. That was the least he could do, to try and keep them all safe.

He glanced over at the door. The dog had gone outside, at some point when he wasn’t paying attention to it. Now he had to go find the dratted thing. As silly and bothersome as the creature sometimes was, he couldn’t simply let it go.


End file.
